How to Hide Your Fugly TV Cords

Have you ever noticed how decor magazines never show you cords and cables in a room? Obviously these aren’t Amish homes, so what’s up with that?

In the spirit of real world decorating, cords shouldn’t matter. Still, I despise ’em. There are great fixes to hide cords, like mounting your TV to the wall and hiding the cords inside. But when you live in an apartment, that’s a no-go. So I decided to try an alternative: yarn-wrapped cord covers.

I was hesitant about this at first, for safety reasons. And I may still be wrong–please correct me if so–but it seems if something goes haywire with your cord and it sparks, then won’t it still create a fire anyhow? So I figured what the hell and took a chance.

Actually, this project does use an approved cord cover (before the yarn): split flex tubing. You can find it in the electrical section. Here’s what it looks like before:

I spraypainted the tubing to match my beige walls, but when I started bending it and stringing my cables through it, the paint flaked off. Apparently this type of plastic doesn’t do well with spraypaint. #DIYfail

Plan B: use the extra cover I didn’t paint and wrap it with thick yarn instead. This method worked so much better and was far quicker than spraypaint. Here’s how I did it:

1. First, I shut off the power to everything. I left all the cables connected where they should and just unplugged the surge protector.

2. Next, I temporarily grouped my cords together with a twisty tie. Doing this allowed me to see which cords I could combine into the tubing.

I ended up needing 2 separate groups of cords. The first one was from the TV down to the DVD player/cable box below while the second group was from the cable box/DVD player to the surge protector and cable outlet.

3. I then measured the length of each group of wires and cut my the tubing to fit. This was really easy to do with a basic pair of scissors.

4. The tubing is flexible and opens, so I then added my cords by spreading the tubing apart a little. I did this one cord at a time.

5. Next came the yarn. I wrapped it on 3 strands together, one yard at a time to make it easier. To attach it to the tubing, I used a hot glue gun just on the ends. For the parts where I wrapped yarn around actual cord, I made sure not to use hot glue onto the cord itself– instead, I glued it to the yarn I’d previously wrapped.

That’s it! Naturally, the cords are still visible, but now they’re almost camouflaged into the background. Some parts are a thicker where I combined a few cords that wouldn’t fit into the tubing, but since they’re hidden once you push the TV back to the wall. No worries.

I spent less than $10 for this project, which makes the outcome even sweeter. Here’s what it looks like from the back, all nicely organized:

From the front:

And the best part, the before and after shots (they’re slightly different since I moved the TV to another part of the room and changed up the decor):

How do you disguise your cords and cables? Or do you proudly display them? Do you have anything camouflaged in your home?